Representative democracies rely
upon elections to establish and maintain the link between the will of the
people and the elites chosen to represent the public will. This course will
examine three interrelated concepts of the American electoral process: voting,
campaigns, and elections. First, we
will examine the theories and methods employed to identify likely voters and
the factors that impact their vote choice. Furthermore, we will identify some
of the barriers that help explain why others do not vote. Second, we will turn our attention to presidential elections. We
will identify the distinct factors that determine a campaign’s effectiveness—the
ground game, the candidate and their message, and campaign advertisements—as
well as the structural factors that influence an electoral outcome. We will trace
the 2014 Presidential Elections to weigh the extent to which aspects of the
campaign versus structural factors mattered in its outcome. We will conclude by
looking ahead to the 2016 Presidential Election.